By Tim Traver During a mild winter in northern New England, there are those of us who rejoice over our lower heating bills and those who scan the forecast, hoping for cold and snow. In a classic El Niño year like this one, when we often get unseasonably mild weather well into February, there…

Crow communication is cawfully complicated By Joe Rankin “Caw! Caw!” Every spring we hear it. And my wife says, “that’s My Crow.” It’s apparently the bird’s name. She capitalizes it in her tone. I think she hasn’t bestowed a more formal name because she doesn’t know whether it’s a male or female. My Crow is…

By Dave Mance III If you’re a hunter who’s ever ordered something from a sporting goods company, it’s probably safe to assume that you’ve been inundated with catalogues over the past four months. God help you if you save your seed catalogues, too. If you take a moment to flip through your now complete seasonal…

By Meghan McCarthy McPhaul For several days last winter, a barred owl perched atop a dead white birch tree in our field. As winters go, last year’s was very cold, and the owl puffed up against the stubbornly below-freezing temperatures, its streaky brown and white feathers fluffed and fluttering in the icy breeze. Occasionally the…

By Declan McCabe By December, foliage season is long over for us humans, but it’s peak season under the water. Last month, as the last bus of tourists departed for home, fallen leaves accumulated in our streams and rivers, starting a process that’s critical for the nourishment of everything from caddisflies on up the food…

By Rachel Sargent The oyster mushroom: delicious, frequently spotted on veggie pizzas, and predatory. That’s right. The hyphae of many fungi, including the oyster mushroom, attack and paralyze prey. Then, as R. Greg Thorn of Western University enthusiastically described, the fungi “grow down their throats and digest them from the inside.” Oyster mushrooms live in…

By Michael J. Caduto There was a time in the waters known by the Abenaki peoples as Kwenitegok, “Long River,” when migratory fish moved in such multitudes that their backs appeared as a living bridge from shore to shore. After the glacier melted, shad and alewives returned to migrate up our rivers for 10,000 years,…

By Elise Tillinghast Last week, a black bear in a blaze orange collar showed up in our yard. Two cubs followed close behind. The sow paused to observe the house, then led her cubs up across our field and down into a small stand of apple trees beside the road. There the family feasted on…

By Carolyn Lorié Along with the crisp mornings and crimson colors that signal summer’s slide into fall, there are changes occurring in the forests that go mostly unnoticed. Among them is the dispersal of fisher kits from their mother’s territory into their own. Little is known about the process of fisher families breaking apart, except…

  By Carolyn Lorié When you stumble across something purple in the forest, it’s hard not to stop in your tracks. At least it was for me on a recent hike in Thetford, when I came across three purple mushrooms. They stood about four inches tall, with saucer tops that were nearly black in the…

  By Todd McLeish As an avid birdwatcher for more than 30 years, I’ve long been familiar with the big picture of songbird migration. Tiny blackpoll warblers, for instance, fly 1,500 miles from southern New England to the Caribbean in a single two- or three-day flight across open water with nowhere to land if they…

By Joe Rankin Harry Potter rode one during the Quidditch matches at Hogwarts. The Wicked Witch of the West zipped around on one in the Wizard of Oz. We’re talking, of course, about witch’s brooms. No one knows exactly why witches were associated with with flying brooms. But the trope is remarkably persistent. The witch…

  By Madeline Bodin It came from the lake. It is a life form nearly as old as life itself. Living peacefully in the depths for eons, it is awakened by humankind’s abuse of the environment. It strikes out with toxins that attack nerves or the liver. Attempts to kill it only make it more…

By Laurie Morrissey We call them shooting stars, and they never fail to make us catch our breath in surprise and wonder. But they’re not stars at all. Those bright, brief streaks across the night sky are meteors. Clear skies permitting, the next few months bring three excellent chances to see batches of them. Meteors…

By Declan McCabe Invasive species have earned their bad reputations. English sparrows compete with native birds from Newfoundland to South America. Australian brown tree snakes are well on their way to exterminating every last bird from the forests of Guam. And I don’t think anyone can fully predict how Colombia’s rivers will change in response…